Growing Asparagus

I know that I have read/heard that asparagus is supposed to be hard to grow in Florida, since we have milder winters.

However, I was at HD the other weekend and found asparagus plants and since I love asparagus, I had to get them. They were from Bonnie Plants and I know that they only deliver plants that will grow in the specific area, so I am assuming they should grow.

I read they need their own dedicated area, since they spread and return year after year, but wanted to turn to the DG faithful for advice. Has anyone ever had any experience growing asparagus here in FL? From online resources, it seems the biggest issue is that they need a cold winter to go dormant in order to successfully produce, which makes me wonder if I can put them in a cooler/fridge/freezer for a short while to "trigger" a winter.

Any and all advise is appreciated. :-)

You can't fool mother nature. LOL
I grew it up north in Conn. & R.I. but never tried it here.
Good luck and if you succeed let us know. Takes 2 years usually to produce.
Bonnie

Since I got them, I figured...might as well try. So I built a small bed for them filled with compost and bordered it off in such a way that (if they grow), I will be able to expand that bed. I have 3 dogs that I nee to keep out of it. I have already started seeing little babies starting to shoot up out of the ground.

The instructions I got (from the upnawth nursery) when I bought 24 asparagus plants (for my NC garden) included saying that they needed about pH neutral soil which would be pH from 6.0 to 7.5. My Port St. Lucie, FL soil is pH 5.5, pretty acid. If you have no idea what your soil is, I suggest you contact your local Florida Master Gardener office. They love to research and answer questions and will also get your soil tested for free.

Ask the Hillsborough Cty Extension Service (http://hillsborough.ifas.ufl.edu) how to contact them. btw, correct my spelling of your county if it's wrong. The nice thing about asparagus is that once they like where they're planted, hey keep coming back. Also, if you just have a few, use the tender tops, freshly cut, in your salads.

Please let us know how it works,

Paul






Paul

Bonnie Plants are "regional" but that region is quite extensive. So they come out of GA where is does get much cooler in the winter. I've not heard of a warm weather variety.
Just tike the Bonnie Tomato plants, most will grow in FL but are not appropriate for FL which is why you get poor performance and short lived plants.
I stick to what the "better" nursery grows in the veg garden they maintain.

Honestly, unless we have a freakishly cold winter, I doubt they will produce...but I can still hope. :-)

So...after less than 4 months in the ground, I actually have a couple of spears that have popped up! The pictures are not that clear and please ignore the weeds as well, but it is actually growing. Some look like your typical asparagus spear (although very small) and a couple of them look different, so I suspect I have both male and female plants.

Honestly, I was really surprised to see anything come up...

Congratulations. I'm surprised they came up also.

Does anyone know if daffodils will grow in central Fl. ? We used to have tons of them in Conn. and they spread themselves after a year or so. Would just like to try some as they are beautiful and some have lots of fragrance.

Bonnie

I also live in Florida and bought 20 'male' Jersey Supreme bare root plants a year ago. I had 2 raised beds built specifically for them. All my bare root plants grew and had lots of spears; I didn't cut any spears during this first year; I kept them shaded until just recently; some got really tall; I kept having to raise the shade. They were massive and I just recently cut them way back. I now see a few spears popping up (but nothing like a year ago). Also from about 6 months until they were cut back, I had a lot of red berries on them; so they weren't male (as sold by Park Seed).

The Jersey Supreme are suppose to be ready for eating in year 2 (that is this spring for me). But now that I know I had female plants, I'm not sure if they need another year.

I left feedback twice on that particular item at ParkSeed but they never posted it - funny how they don't post anything but a 5 star.

I have read that growing asparagus in Florida has diminishing returns - ie every year the plants produce less. If I don't get many spears this year, I will probably just eat the ones I get and reclaim the beds for something more productive.

Good luck with yours; I'm surprised yours took so long to pop up; all of mine took < 3 weeks; it could be I started in cooler weather though.

If you want daffodils in FL you need to have room in your fridge & freezer to give them Winter. Same with tulips.

Same problem with the asparagus. They can't get that winter dormant period in FL so you may get lucky a couple years but then they will just fade away.

If I may meddle ~ lol
I love asparagus (crave it every spring) and at this time of year I have serious zone envy for you folks in Florida. Sorry... but we've had four ice/snow storms which is totally abnormal for here.

Anyway a couple of comments. This is a great and informative Florida resource. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mv013 As I understand the two different types of plant spears you probably have two different types of plants and that may be good. It also doesn't hurt to have male/female plants either.

And as I recall from childhood, it is not recommended to cut back the tall fronds until they die back. That is how the roots receive the nutrients needed to produce next years' crop.

Please post your successes and failures with Asparagus as it is on my 'wish to grow' list also.

And as an aside to Bonniegardens, Daffodils grow here and your zone isn't too far removed. They are just now getting ready to bloom and come back (and multiply) every spring without fail. Like the asparagus, the folks that cut back the Daffodil foliage before it dies will eventually loose their Daffodil crop as the bulbs will starve and die.

Hope you don't mind my meddling... Kristi

I honestly was not expecting any success from the asparagus. They were Bonnie plants and even from their site, they showed them as growing in zone 8 and below. Being in zone 9, I thought that maybe, I might at least get the fern plant portion to grown and be a pretty addition to the back yard (hiding a fence). Needless to say, I was quite surprised when I saw an actual spear growing. I am not going to cut anything back on them and just let them grow (and hope they make it through the summer heat).

Podster - Please continue to meddle....haha

There is lots (well enough) info growing asparagus in Florida for the first year, but it severely is lacking on what to do after the first year.

I ended up cutting my ferns down b/c a lot of them were dried out and I could pull out the stalk; so they were rotting out. Once they were all down, I gave them all a slight tug and left the green ones and brown non-rotted ones intact.

I have a several edible looking spears now; but in one day, they shoot up and become ferns. My ferns were 6' tall.

I had the red berries from July through January.

The ferns on mine are around 12-18 inches tall and have only been in the ground a few months. I am not harvesting or cutting back any part of them now, just trying to encourage growth. One website I found said not to harvest for the first 2 years, to let the plants and roots get established, so I am leaving them alone and letting them grow as they like.

Shauna

Podster,
Thank you for meddling. I'm too old to fool with plants that probably won't amount to anything.

I've developed an interest in petunias which I haven't grown much before but I think they will do fine here.

Happy gardening all.

Bonnie I have a heirloom Daff that might grow down there. I have grown them for over 50 years and I never dig them up, except to thin them out.. I have seen these blooming down in Gainesville.

Any one interested in some let me know in a few months. They need to be thinned but they are blooming right now.(started blooming in Dec.)
Note I never plant them more than a inch or 2 below the surface and this seems to help other types of Daff's

Sandy

BonnieGardens ~ how old is too old to fool with plants??? lol Hope none of us ever get there. I believe as long as we are physically able it will keep us young.

Petunias should also do fine. There are two fragrant ones that I love. Their fragrance gets stronger in the evening when it is more pleasant to sit on the porch and enjoy it.

I had a mess of asparagus for dinner last night... from the store is never as good as home grown. I need to try growing some for myself.

My Grandmother was still gardening at 92 when she died. So you never get to old
to garden. Thought in my case I do need help to do it.

Sandy

I said I didn't want to fool with plants that probably wouldn't make it here during my lifetime. I feel like I'm ageing faster this year. YUK Heavens as long as your breathing growing plants is wonderful. Really all depends on your health and physical abilities. For me best rewards from gardening is fresh vegies. I have to admit I spend more time taking care of shrubs and flowering plants. (and fish)

Got to move on to pool work. Waiting for SIL to come from N. Fl. with large pressure washer.
Mine is too puny to do a good job. Trying to avoid acid washing it this time before painting.
It's 20X40 and ranges from 10 to 3 1/2 feet deep. Takes 40,000 gals. of water to fill. I'll try to add a pic. Also garzania from last years RU. Just started to bloom.

Happy gardening all.
Bonnie

Daffodils: I’m been testing daffodils in central Florida for the Florida Daffodil Society since 2009. The first year the bulbs were in the ground was beautiful of course. The bulbs were blooming off the prior season’s growth wherever that was.

The second year (2010) blooming was significantly reduced.

Since then they have produced just leaves if they grew at all.

The current theory is that the summer night temperature matters. My daffodils are located in the sunniest, hottest part of my yard. The thought is that too many nights above 70° kill the blooms.

My front yard overnight temps are regularly at or above 70°.

I’ve been planning to move the bulbs to a partially shaded location where the ground would not bake in the sun all day but somehow that hasn’t happened yet.

I’ve also thought that if just 1 bulb would bloom, that perhaps that bulb would be a heat-tolerant individual that could be the foundation of a new variety.

Amazingly 1 Erlicheer bulb is about to bloom.

Candace

Thanks much for the daffodil info.
Bonnie

Wyckoff the one I have grown for 50+ years gets part shade in the summer and full sun in the winter(pecan tree) also I do not plant them deep, just a inch below the surface. I have seen them blooming in full sun down in Gainesville.
Mine usually start blooming in Dec.-some are still blooming now.
Even in warm winters they bloom
I really need to have these thinned this year.
I was told that this one was called Grand Primo
Let me know if any one wants to try them.

Bonnie, I do believe I'd fill that pool in with good gardening soil. It would be less work! lol

The passalong daffodils that I have are in full bloom right now. I suspect they were beat down in the hard rain last night but this was them growing with wild abandon in the pet cemetery.

With my apologies Shauna1213 for posting this in your Asparagus thread. I'd be taking photos of the asparagus if only I had some.

A friend said his Dad grew Asparagus in Houston in an old cast iron bathtub. I had thought about that but not sure soil was the only issue with southern Asparagus.

Wren, sure would be nice if you could bring some daffs with you to RU. Really reminds me of the ones I had in Conn. for years. I do have a shade spot for them. They remind me of narsissas. Can't spell it right.

Podster yours are just beautiful also. Filling in that pool wouldn't be cheap and would still have to pay extra on insurance due to pool cage. Heck, might as well swim in it while I'm able.
I call it heat relief cause it gets pretty hot here during the summers which are long.
I was in Leaky, Texas last summer and it sure wasn't cool there either. That's a little town about 1 and 1/2 hrs. from San Antonio. All rocky and of course mountains. Not my cup of tea. Where I came from in Conn. the land had loads of rocks also. I remember hauling rocks off land to be able to plant it. YUK Here we have to buy rocks. LOL

Narcissus is the scientific genus that the Daffodils are in, so either name will work for all of them.. Just learned they are in the same family as the Amaryllis-little confused and how they fit together
I will have some potted up

Great you are really on the ball. Can't wait to have time to do some planting. Just happens that shade spot I have looks bare. I did bury a large fish there last week that we lost so should be fertile ground.
I also need to haul up some manure and top off all the beds. Plus I usually spray everything with fish emulsion.

Lots to do in too little time but better than being bored.

Bonnie